A
University of Otago academic has received a prestigious award for his work on
18th century writer James Boswell.
Senior
English lecturer Dr Paul Tankard was awarded, in absentia in New York, the
sixth triennial William L. Mitchell Prize for Bibliography or Documentary Work
on Early British Periodicals or Newspapers this week for his book Facts and
Inventions: Selections from the Journalism of James Boswell.
The book
provides a lengthy, insightful introduction to Boswell’s career, strategies,
manner, and achievement as a frequent writer for the British press and also to
the 14 newspapers and magazines of London and Edinburgh to which he
contributed.
Although
Boswell is well known for his Life of Johnson, several other books and
his private journals, Dr Tankard’s work reveals him as a “busy professional
writer with an almost constant presence in the British press”, to which he
contributed more than 600 pieces.
Dr Tankard
edited, with assistance from colleague Lisa Marr, 130 pieces of Boswell’s
journalism dating from 1758 to 1794, grouped by theme. The great majority have
been unpublished since the 18th century.
“The material for the book was hiding in plain sight; it has
all been previously published, but not for over 200 years, and in old
newspapers which are very hard to find, much less look through. It’s never been
gathered before and considered in a body,’’ he says.
Annotating and contextualising such material was a
challenge, especially as it was all written by Boswell to be teasing and
topical.
“It is mostly not about things in the history books
and takes us very close to history as it happens. As well as giving — for
most readers, including scholars — a new view of Boswell, I see the book as a
contribution to the history of journalism.
“Newspaper culture was just taking off in the 18th century,
and now that it is so rapidly changing with new media, its origins are well
worth considering. Some of what Boswell is doing is strangely up-to-date —
there’s some genuine fake news there!”
Dr Tankard’s
book was unanimously selected for the US award from several worthy nominations.
The judges
described the work as a “stunning achievement”, “stupendous in its detail”, and
a book which ``richly contextualizes the often-obscure historical references
and allusions found in Boswell’’.
The
Mitchell Prize for Research on Early British Serials was endowed to honor
William L. Mitchell, a former rare-books librarian at the Kenneth Spencer
Research Library at the University of Kansas.
The prize,
of $1000 and a year’s membership to the society, serves as an encouragement to
those engaged in bibliographical scholarship on 18th century
periodicals published in English or in any language but within the British
Isles and its colonies and former colonies.
* Dr Tankard’s
publications include more than two dozen essays in books and research journals,
a great many on Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, as well as Samuel
Johnson’s Designs: A Facsimile of the Manuscript, with a New Transcription and
an Introductory Essay, the 2008 annual keepsake of the Johnsonians of New
York.
Important
recent articles include “Nineteen More Johnsonian Designs: A Supplement
to ‘That Great Literary Projector’” in The Age of Johnson (2015),
building on his lengthy 2002 article on Johnson’s “Catalogue of Projected
Works” in that journal.
He is the
editor of 15 volumes of The Johnson Society of Australia Papers. 
New York City's 
